


Tangled Mess

by pprfaith



Series: Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Breakup, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Kid-fic, Loss, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mourning, Moving On, Not Beta Read, Parent-Child Relationship, Romance, Sequel, Snippets, Tattoos, This makes zero sense without the previous stories, and it contains about the same warnings, craft, future!fic, hopeful, so you're good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9618683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: Ink and yarn have always been what holds this mess of a family together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sick and this is how I amuse myself. Don't judge.

+

1

John never understands Claudia’s fascination for sticks and string. Once, early in their courtship, he buys himself a pair of cheap, plastic needles and a few balls of bright yellow yarn and he makes a scarf for Claudia. 

Yes, he’s that stupidly in love. 

It takes forever and he guesses that might be alright, if the final result was at least worth it, but no dice. It’s crooked and sloppy and doesn’t look like the picture _at all_. What Claudia does with needles is magic. This is not magic. 

He gives it to her anyway, stuttering and blushing and she laughs and wraps it around her neck in July and tells him that she adores all the work he put into it, but next time, just give her the yarn, okay?

So, no, he doesn’t get why she loves the stuff so much, but he loves her for it, anyway.

The first thing she ever makes for Stiles is a blanket. She falls in love with the pattern and starts the circular crochet blanket before she is even in her second trimester, all creams and soft greens. 

When Stiles is six months old, she comes home wincing and limping one day and that night, after their little bundle of joy and _noise_ is finally asleep, John strips his wife to find the pattern of that exact blanket tattooed on her hip. Not the words he never understands, but the diagram of lines and squiggles, crosses and circles. 

It is beautiful. 

+

2

Erica is deathly afraid of needles. 

After a childhood spent being poked, prodded and doctored, it’s understandable. She still feels like an idiot, though, because when Stiles gets it into his head to knit them all socks for winter, even his knitting needles freak her out because they’re thin and pointy and just… _needleish_. Shut up. 

He notices, at some point, and makes a point to only bring his chunkiest projects around her after that, needles as thick as his fingers. Scott jokes that they’re stakes for vampire slaying, and Erica has to school the idiot on vampire lore for the next hour because plastic does not make a stake. No. Just. No. 

And then Alli and Stiles get their stupid tattoos. Alli’s needles are kind of cool, nicely sketched, even if they are _needles_ , but Stiles’ bow and arrow is a travesty and she’s honestly peeved he didn’t let her sketch him something. It’s not like she’s been doodling on any and all surfaces for most of her life, or anything. 

Still, the tattoos are sort of exciting because here is something gorgeous, something meaningful, that came from _needles_. 

It takes her three weeks to work up the guts to research the whole thing and three more before she sets foot in the parlor Alli and Stiles went to. She takes a deep breath, scrapes together every bit of bravery she has and asks the guy behind the counter, “What do I need to do to learn how to tattoo?”

+

3

Isaac has exactly one tattoo. It’s his mother’s and brother’s birthdates in simple copperplate, framed by flowers, on the inside of his upper left arm. 

Close to his heart. 

The flowers are daffodils and honeysuckle, the birth flowers for the months March and June and when Eri presented the sketch to him, he cried. 

+

4

While they wait for their appointment, Stiles sits on the lumpy sofa in the waiting area and crochets. 

Allison sits next to him, alternately mortified at being seen with someone doing _crochet_ in a _tattoo parlor_ and endlessly impressed with her friend’s _no fucks given_ policy. She figures after doing craft in the high school cafeteria for years, a tattoo parlor is probably nothing. 

Still, when the big, tattooed, pierced guy comes out from the back to wave them through, she flushes scarlet. Stiles just nods, tucks the needle behind his ear and stuffs the rest of his project into her purse, because of course he does. 

Once he’s decided you’re one of his people, Stiles just sort of…spreads all through every nook and cranny of your life. Like ivy. Or cancer, only they don’t make that joke.

She goes first, because Stiles is a wimp, and he sits down in a corner, gaze firmly averted due to ‘fainting reasons’ and promptly continues with the hat. Once they have the placement for her tattoo picked out and perfected, Allison lies down and the artist goes to work, making small talk to distract her. 

They run out after a while and he turns to Stiles, asking, “What’re you making, dude?”

“Hat,” Stiles supplies, sounding only slightly defensive. 

But the big man just nods thoughtfully as he switches out needles and briefly explains that now comes the shading, the worst is over.

“My wife made me a really cool hat and scarf set for Christmas. Super warm. Merino, or something.”

Stiles nods along wisely. “Yeah, yeah. Merino is super soft, right!”

And then the big, burly tattoo artist and her quirky, spastic mess of a friend talk yarn for the rest of her tattoo and a large portion of Stiles’, too. It’s a bit ridiculous to watch, but it also keeps Stiles from fainting, so she figures it’s a win. 

They settle up, tip the guy and are almost out the door, both a bit high from the pain and jittery with being seventeen and newly tattooed, when Stiles asks, “Hey, man, can I borrow some scissors for a sec?”

He can. 

He turns the burgundy hat he made inside out, snips off a few threads, turns it right side out and plonks it right down on Alli’s hair with a grin and a wink.

It’s far from the first thing he ever made for her, but it’s her favorite for a long time.

+

5

When Cora is four, she climbs onto Stiles’ lap solemnly, slaps a hand over the writing running down his forearm and asks, very seriously, “When do my pictures show up?”

+

6

Erica’s first tattoo is one she gives herself, six months after starting her apprenticeship. It’s right above her knee, a little butterfly made up of crooked lines and pretty decent blue shading. 

Before every tattoo she makes, no matter how big or small, she touches it briefly. For good luck.

+

7

Technically, Scott is the first of all of them to get inked. He’s sixteen and thinks that getting two rings on his arm to commemorate his two month breakup with Allison and both a fantastic idea and a sign of his devotion. 

His mother almost gouges the tattoo out of his skin with her bare nails when she finds out, she’s so angry, and Alli still won’t talk to him.

Five years later, he’s mortified by the whole thing, especially when Kira asks about it and he has to tell her the truth. 

“Well, then give it a new meaning,” she says.

After a while, he makes a decision and calls his mom. “About my tattoo,” he says, and he can hear her doubtful, “Are you getting it removed?”

By this point, most of his friends have ink, so no. Even if his is embarrassing, it will never be as bad as Boyd’s ass tattoo (never bet against Stiles). “I’ve decided it means something else.”

“Mhm?” she asks and he can hear her fiddling with her purse in the background, probably on her way to work. 

“Family,” he tells her and he can hear all movement cease on her end of the line. “You and me. Two rings for two members of my family. Is that… is that okay, Mom?”

+

8

Kira is alternately fascinated by tattoos and intimidated by them.

“You should get one,” Erica tells her one night after she catches her staring at Stiles’ leg. It’s Pizza Night and Kira’s only recently been invited to them and she’s already mortified to be caught being a creep. “No, hey, I’m serious.”

“I couldn’t,” Kira hedges. “I mean… I’m not cool enough.”

That earns him a laugh from Isaac, sitting close by. “You think Stiles is cool enough for tattoos?”

Stiles hears and whacks him with a pillow while Erica calmly explains, “Coolness is not a requirement. Just a desire to express yourself.”

Kira shrugs. “I wouldn’t know what to get, anyway.”

There’s a glint in the blonde woman’s eyes that she’ll later learn to fear. But not yet. 

“Challenge accepted,” Erica drawls before throwing herself bodily into the pillow fight that has broken out. Kira expects that to be it.

But six weeks later, Erica shows up at Kira’s dorm with a sketch of a running fox, full color, as big as Kira’s head, and as vibrant as the traditional paintings on her parents’ living room walls.

It looks perfect on her thigh. 

+

9

Boyd’s skin is too dark for grey scale tattoos to really show up well, but that’s just how he likes it. It means he can wear his heart on his sleeve and still not bear everything to the casual passerby. 

The only one who knows all of his tattoos is Erica, because she put them all on his skin, from the first, simple _Alicia_ across his left pectoral, to the ball of yarn on his ass (never bet against Stiles), to the poppy underneath Alicia’s name, their daughter’s birth flower. 

Alicia and Alicia, right next to each other, name and flower, sister and daughter. Full circle. 

Only Eri knows, for now, but one day, he’ll sit their daughter down and explain them all to her.

He hopes she’ll understand, the same way her mother does. 

+

10

The day after his honeymoon, Scott gets a thin black ring tattooed on the forth finger of his left hand, right beneath his wedding band. 

When his first child is born, he gets a thicker band on his right ankle. 

Family.

+

11

Danny has a tramp stamp and he’s damn proud of it. Shut up. 

+

12

A week after getting the fox, Kira finds a care package filled with a book about foxes, a wonderfully fuzzy orange sweater and a hat with little fox ears on her doorstep. 

She texts Stiles about a hundred little hearts and happy emojis.

_Only the best for you, Foxy,_ he texts back. 

+

13

Stiles cries the whole time he’s letting Erica ink a single strand of yarn into his wrist.

Afterwards, she locks up early, drags him to her favorite bar and proceeds to get him smashed. 

With a straw, because holding anything makes his wrist scream in agony. 

+

14

Lydia’s first experience with tattoos is the sweaty handymen that renovate her parents’ pool house when she’s six. She’s fascinated by the pictures on their bare torsos but her mother is scandalized, so she shelves the whole thing under _bad_ and is done with it. 

Scott’s idiotic tattoo reinforces that opinion and while more and more of her friends get inked, she purses her lips and keeps her opinions to herself. She loves Erica’s art, of course, has a few of her friend’s pieces hung up on her walls, but why on _skin_?

Then Stiles takes off his shirt for the first time after getting his wings, flexes his shoulders and looks back at her over his left, eyes hooded with a mixture of pride and shame and Lydia – 

Lydia thinks she understands, for the first time, why anyone would put something on their skin, would want to mark themselves. 

The wings are not pretty. They are dark and sharp and vicious and they read pain and loss and rage and she remembers telling Stiles he was a forest fire, once, years ago, because he tries to hide his dark side from everyone, but Lydia has never fallen for his deflections and distractions, has always seen right through him. Has always known that, out of all of them, Stiles is the one with the biggest potential to do terrible things.

He smiled at her when she called him a forest fire, dark and broken, and he smiles at her now, the same way, but lighter, somehow. 

Less burdened. 

The wings aren’t pretty, but they are beautiful. And she thinks she might understand why he needed them on his skin.

+

15

When Derek gets to visit Grandpa Stilinski alone for a week when he’s eight, the man unlocks a room at the far end of the upstairs landing and shows him a craft room full of dust and half-empty shelves.

“It was Stiles’ mother’s craft room,” he explains to Derek, who stands in the center of the room, afraid to touch anything.

“Grandma Stilinski?” he asks, and Grandpa’s face does something strange, almost like he wants to cry, but he just says, “Yes. Her.”

“Why’s it so dirty?”

“Because no-one has been in here for years and years. I thought this week, if you want to, you and me could clean it up a little. Figure out what stuff Stiles would like, and then, maybe, we can turn it into a room for when you and your sisters visit. What do you think?”

When Grandpa drives him home on Saturday, the trunk is full of craft supplies and patterns and half-finished projects and on Derek’s lap in the front seat is a framed little square of terribly crooked crochet.

It goes up next to his, Laura’s and later, Cora’s, in the craft room at home. 

+

16

After breaking up with Jackson for the final time, Lydia get a tiny, pale cherry blossom on the inside of her right wrist, where it can easily be hidden by her watch. 

A reminder that there is beauty in the world, always, even without Jackson. 

When she gets home, the gossamer shrug she’s been pestering Stiles about for months lies folded on her dining room table, along with a bottle of expensive wine and a box of chocolates.

_You’re Lydia Fucking Martin. Hang in there and call me_ , the card propped against the bottle says.

+

17

Peter is not good with his hands.

It’s something he’s known for most of his life. His head is a marvel, he is an excellent cook, has a lot of other talents. Creating things with his hands is not one of them. 

It’s still humiliating to know that he can’t do what his seven-year-old nephew does effortlessly.

“You’re holding the needle wrong, Uncle Peter,” a small voice pipes up beside him and he almost stabs Derek with the crochet hook out of surprise. 

The boy completely misses it, already busy clambering onto Peter’s lap. He lays his little hands over Peter’s and starts fixing things to his satisfaction. Then he squints at the mangled thing of yarn under their hands. “What are you making?”

“A scarf,” Peter growls, more because he’s annoyed that it’s not obvious, than because of Derek. 

His nephew blinks. “Oh. Uhm… That’s not…,” he frowns, eyebrows dancing. 

“Can I?”

And then he pulls the whole mess out of Peter’s hands, rips out the stitches, rewinds the yarn and fiddles with the needle for a moment before passing it back.

“You try again, and I’ll tell you what you do wrong, okay? Start chaining.” He leans back to give Peter room to work and Peter has to take a deep breath, because the words coming out of his mouth are one-hundred percent Stiles, but his tone of voice is so Talia that it twists his heartstring.

Apparently, his moment of blind grief takes too long, because Derek pokes his elbow into his uncle’s ribs. “Uncle Peter. Start chaining.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Peter announces and, among a lot of giggling and critiquing from a second grader, Peter eventually manages something that almost resembles a scarf. And in time for Christmas, too. 

Stiles wears it all winter.

+

18

Laura is twelve when she slaps a pattern for a little pouch down in front of Stiles, next to two finished squares of cross stitching. 

“Help me make this.”

“Please,” Stiles says without looking up from his laptop.

She rolls her eyes. “You used to be fun before you turned all _parent_ ,” she grouses. “ _Please_.”

He gives her a wounded look, but puts his laptop down to look at the pattern. “No problem. Five minutes with the sewing machine.”

Which Laura isn’t allowed to use without supervision. Still.

“Can we do it now?”

“Whoa. Why the rush? What’s it for?”

“It’s a bank,” she tells him. 

That earns her a blank look. “A bank?”

“Yes.” She holds up the cross stitching, which has flowers on one square and coins (well, round things in yellow thread) on the other. She freestyled it, okay?

“Okay.”

He helps her sew up the pouch and whenever the change starts to overflow, he plays actual bank and changes it into bills for her, even though she never tells him what the money’s for and he never figures it out himself. 

Not until she comes home the night after her eighteenth birthday with an aching, saran wrapped, ankle and an empty pouch.

“She gets that from you,” Peter grouses at his husband, who beams and blinks away tears as he stares at her (first) tattoo.

“Come on,” he finally says, sounding a little choked, still, “I’ll help you clean it.”

+

19

The first time John visits Stiles after he moves in with Peter and the kids, there is a giant, round blanket folded over the back of the living room sofa. It’s dark red, absolutely gorgeous and looks strangely familiar. 

It’s not until he sees it spread over the sleeping children that evening that he recognizes the pattern. 

His wife once had it tattooed on her skin. 

He jerks at the realization, meets his son’s gaze and gets a smile and a shrug in response. 

“I wasn’t sharing mine, so-,” he makes a gesture at the tangle of kids under the blanket. 

John snorts a laugh at that. “You never were good at sharing your things.” 

There is a beat of silence and John lets it sit there between them, at peace, for once. Cora snuffles and Derek curls tighter around her and Stiles smiles a helpless, stupid smile John remembers on his own face, from a long, long time ago. 

“Did I ever tell you,” he hears himself asking into the silence, “about your mother’s tattoo?”

+

**Author's Note:**

> I'm calling a vote: what hurts more, outline or shading?


End file.
